Hawkins and Nosek (2012): Motivated Independence? Implicit Party Identity Predicts Political Judgments among Self-Proclaimed Independents

Reporting an Independent political identity does not guarantee the absence of partisanship. Independents demonstrated considerable variability in relative identification with Republicans versus Democrats as measured by an Implicit Association Test (IAT M=0.10, SD=0.47). To test whether this variation predicted political judgment, participants read a newspaper article describing two competing welfare (Study 1) or special education (Study 2) policies. We manipulated which policy was proposed by which party. Among self-proclaimed Independents, those who were implicitly Democratic preferred the liberal welfare plan, and those who were implicitly Republican preferred the conservative welfare plan. And, regardless of the policy details, these implicit partisans preferred the policy proposed by “their” party, and this effect occurred more strongly for implicit than explicit plan preference. We suggest that implicitly partisan Independents may consciously override some partisan influence when making explicit political judgments, and Independents may identify as such to appear objective even when they are not

When ingroups aren't "In": perceived political belief similarity moderates religious ingroup favoritism.

Motivated thinking leads people to perceive similarity between the self and ingroups, but under some conditions, people may recognize that personal beliefs are misaligned with the beliefs of ingroups. In two focal experiments and two replications, we find evidence that perceived belief similarity moderates ingroup favoritism. As part of a charity donation task, participants donated money to a community charity or a religious charity. Compared to non-religious people, Christians favored religious charities, but within Christians, conservative Christians favored religious charities more than liberal Christians did. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the perceived political beliefs of the charity accounted for the differences in ingroup favoritism between liberal and conservative Christians. While reporting little awareness of the influence of ideology, Christian conservatives favored religious charities because they perceived them as conservative and liberal Christians favored the community charity because they perceived it as liberal

Perceived political belief similarity predicts favoritism for Christians.

<p>Regression analysis predicting the number of dollars contributed to the Community Service Center Charity from social political ideology and perceived political position of the charity.</p

Regression Results for Experiment 1.

<p><i>Note.</i> The 3-way interaction was tested and dropped from the model, so the model reported in the text has only main effects and 2-way interactions. Political ideology was measured on a scale of −3 (<i>strongly conservative</i>) to 3 (<i>strongly liberal</i>). Charity framing was dummy coded as community (<i>0</i>) or religious (<i>1</i>) and religious group membership was dummy coded as nonreligious (<i>0</i>) or Christian (<i>1</i>). Unstandardized regression coefficients should be interpreted in the context of these scales.</p

Christians’ Contributions to Charities and Correlation with Political Ideology for Experiments 1 and 2.

<p><i>Note.</i> Total Contribution = $1000 without rounding error. All correlations are significant at the <i>p</i><.05 level except the Community Service Center and Defenders of Animal Rights in Experiment 1 and AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and Institute for Educational Advancement in Experiment 2.</p

Perceived Politics of the Charities and Correlation with Political Ideology in Experiment 2.

<p><i>Note.</i> Perceived politics and social political ideology were measured on the same scale of −3 (<i>strongly conservative</i>) to 3 (<i>strongly liberal</i>). Each denomination charity was only viewed by participants of that denomination.</p

Regression Results for Experiment 2.

<p><i>Note.</i> The 3-way interaction between charity framing, social political ideology, and perceived politics of the charity was tested initially but was not significant and was subsequently dropped from the model. Social political ideology and perceived politics were measured on a scale of −3 (<i>strongly conservative</i>) to 3 (<i>strongly liberal</i>) and charity framing was dummy coded as community (<i>0</i>) or religious (<i>1</i>). All statistics reported are unstandardized regression coefficients and should be interpreted in the context of these scales. Significance tests for <i>t</i> statistics associated with unstandardized regression coefficients are reported as <i>p</i> values:</p>*<p><.01,</p>**<p><.001,</p>***<p><.0001.</p

Political ideology predicts favoritism for both Christians and nonreligious people.

<p>Regression analysis predicting the number of dollars contributed to the Community Service Center Charity by political ideology and charity framing (community or religious) by both Christians and non-religious people for Experiment 1.</p